Talk Like An Egyptian: 15 Mins Of Rome II Footage

Share this:

This is the wrong battle to highlight when I’m in the middle of a massive Frasier rewatch. I see “Nile”, and all I can think of is the tragedy of the unrequited love that Niles has for Daphne. I’m six seasons in and Donnie and Daphne have just gotten engaged. Noooooooooo! Now I’m sad, and entirely in the wrong state of mind to write about this Rome II “Let’s Play”. There’s 15 minutes of direct feed, right from the heart of the Roman Empire’s perspective.
Like all popular culture movements, the Let’s Play zeitgeist is being glommed onto by marketers. See, this isn’t from a shouty Youtube personality with a squillion rabid followers, but it instead comes directly from the Creative Assembly’s own Al Bickham, as he takes on The Battle of the Nile. At least I can comfortably embed it without worrying about unfortunate political opinions, and Al’s as lovely as Niles, so I don’t begrudge him. He’s also pretty darn good at Rome twoing, as you’ll see below.

It’s out 3rd September 2013. Meanwhile, I think we can all agree this is one of the finest bits of comedy that’s ever graced the TV.

47 Comments

Top comments

THE WARRIOR IS FACED WITH A DILEMMA. DO I LOAD THE SPACESHIP WITH THE ROCKETFUEL, LOAD IT WITH THE WORDS AND LET THIS GAME TRAMPLE ME WITH RAGING ELEPHANTS? OR DO I LET THIS GAME DIG IT'S CLAWS INTO MY ORGANS? FEEL MY DESTRUCITY HOAK HOGAN!

It never occurred to me to re watch Frasier until now. You’re the man Craig! I’ll also be lamenting the loss of (what I consider at least) “smart” comedies in the US these days.

As far as the game, my first foray was with Shogun 2 and the castle sieges and setting in general didn’t grab me like I hoped it would. It appears very close to Rome 2 mechanically. Still pretty excited for it tho

I’m sure many will look down on me for saying it, but How I Met Your Mother is actually pretty smart, for the most part. Perhaps not always in its jokes, but it is consistently playing with the narrative structure or trying out quirky ideas. I particularly remember the time when they were putting numbers into various scenes, which were counting down. I was watching the episode with my brother and we were both gleefully calling them out as we saw them… that was until it dawned on us in the middle of the rapid succession at the end what it was counting down towards.

It is not as good as it was in the earlier seasons, but it still has its moments.

I’ve watched the series literally probably 20 times. It truly is the only series I can watch consistently. You can definitely tell both the actors and the writers were fans of the old 30’s screwball comedies. The dialogue is snappy and hilarious. It will be a while until another show of that caliber will come again. I think Ham Radio is probably my favorite episode (The one with the radio mystery).

Though I have to admit after Daphne and Niles got together it felt like there was something missing, and Daphne went from being the quirky weird sassy physical therapist to something else…I can’t really put my finger on it but it was a bad transition. I’m sure people could read into that and make the accusation that I’m sexist or something because her transformation really puts her on par with both Niles and Frasier in terms of equality but you can’t go 7 seasons with a character acting one way and then have the character completely 180. I miss kooky Daphne!

This looks so very, very good. Though I wish I could believe him when he says they’re keeping Shogun2 minimal system requirements. I foresee the necessity for a tech upgrade in my future… at least if I do it now, I should be ready when Witcher 3 comes out.

Yeah my impression of the statement, combat is too fast… is the speed that units are killed and routed, not the speed of walking around, and it does indeed look as though units fight , die, and break very quickly, at least more so than I remember from previous games.

THE WARRIOR IS FACED WITH A DILEMMA. DO I LOAD THE SPACESHIP WITH THE ROCKETFUEL, LOAD IT WITH THE WORDS AND LET THIS GAME TRAMPLE ME WITH RAGING ELEPHANTS? OR DO I LET THIS GAME DIG IT’S CLAWS INTO MY ORGANS? FEEL MY DESTRUCITY HOAK HOGAN!

Meh- Tiny units sprinting across the battlefield and fighting in melees that last a few seconds…looks like standard CA arcadey rare rather than even the vaguest attempt to simulate any form of ancient warfare.

Hopefully the game will be easily modded..CA make good engines but the gameplay design is usually in need of alot of tweaking.